The Splinterlands team is excited to announce the beginning of a new chapter of ranked battle rewards and tokenomics within the game. During our next release window, which is currently scheduled for Thursday, July 6th, 2023, we will be removing the collection power requirements for each ranked battle league and tier and instead we will be implementing a reward multiplier based on the amount of staked SPS the winning player has, including both staked SPS they own and staked SPS that has been delegated to them.
While this doesn't yet achieve the full vision described in the original whitepaper, it is nevertheless a major step in that direction and puts in place one of the final remaining pieces of SPS utility - earning ranked battle rewards. For nearly the past two years players have been able to earn SPS and other rewards from ranked battles without the need to have any SPS staked themselves, and while many players chose to hodl their SPS earnings, many have not, as there was no penalty or negative impact from selling.
This obviously has had a negative impact on the overall economy and ecosystem which is why it is both so important and exciting to replace the collection power system (which has been very easily circumvented and abused) with a new system that encourages players to commit to the ecosystem over the long term by holding and hopefully even purchasing more staked SPS. More specific details are below, but one of the best parts of the new system is that players who have large amounts of staked SPS relative to their league will be able to earn a larger amount of rewards than they were able to in the past.
First and foremost, the removal of the collection power requirements for ranked battles means that there will no longer be anything preventing players from moving up to higher leagues and tiers if they are able to obtain a high enough rating. If a player is able to win matches and earn a high enough rating to get into a particular league or tier then they will be able to move up even if they have no cards in their collection at all, and no SPS staked.
The base amount of Reward Points earned from a ranked battle win (which determines how much SPS is won from the ranked battle reward pool as well as how many Focus and Season Points are earned towards loot chests) will be determined by the following formula:
rating ^ 3 / 10000
This means that a player's ranked battle rating is the single most important factor in their earnings, with earnings increasing massively with higher ratings due to both the fact that the rating is cubed in the formula and that players earn higher tier chests with much better rewards in higher leagues.
The formula above is just for calculating the base amount of Reward Points. After that, all of the typical modifiers will be applied as normal, including bonuses for win streaks, older edition cards, gold foil cards, guild buildings, etc, and penalties for starter cards and under-leveled cards. These modifiers will not be changing as part of this release. After applying any applicable bonuses and penalties we get the modified Reward Points.
Finally, there be a new multiplier applied to the modified Reward Points which will be based on the amount of staked SPS the player has in their account (both owned and delegated), which will determine the final Reward Points earned from the battle. This multiplier will be calculated as follows:
sps_multiplier = Max((staked_sps / (staked_sps + rating_constant)) * 13.3, 1)
rating_constant = ((rating - 100) * 0.007) ^ 3.5
We'll now try to give a simpler explanation of the above formulas. First of all, it's important to note that the SPS multiplier can never go below 1x, even if you have 0 SPS staked or delegated to you. That means you do not need any SPS at all to still earn some rewards. The more staked SPS you have, or have delegated to you, the higher your multiplier will be, up to a max of 13.3x. The current Reward Points being given out now for ranked battle wins, before this change goes live, is equivalent to a 10x multiplier.
The amount of staked or delegated SPS you need to reach a certain multiplier will depend upon your rating. The higher your rating, the more SPS you will need to maintain the same multiplier, but that doesn't mean that players will need to be constantly buying more SPS as they move up. It's important to keep in mind that players will earn more SPS as they play and win battles along with the normal rewards for SPS staking, so their staked SPS will naturally increase as they move up in rating, and they also have the option to stake or rent more SPS if they want to increase their rewards further.
The table below shows the amount of staked or delegated SPS required to achieve different multipliers at various ratings based on the above formula:
At the same time as the SPS multiplier changes are released we are also planning to release a new, simple market for renting staked SPS delegations. The system will be "bid-based", meaning that players who are interested in receiving SPS delegations will be able to submit a bid for the amount of staked SPS they wish to receive and the amount in DEC per SPS per day they are willing to pay for it.
Anyone looking to rent out their extra staked SPS will then be able to fill any open bids and receive the DEC payment. All SPS rentals will be for 7 days, which is the minimum length of time required before an SPS delegation can be removed. This means that when a player submits a bid for an SPS delegation rental they will need to pay for 7 days worth at the price they specified. Similarly, when someone fills a bid they will receive the full 7 days worth upfront.
In order to get this system built and released as quickly as possible, it was kept very simple. Bids will need to be filled completely and cannot be partially filled, so players looking to rent large amounts of SPS can split up their rental into multiple bids of smaller amounts. This option will be easily available in the UI. Additionally, rentals will always be 7 days and cannot be shorter or longer. If players would like to rent SPS for longer than 7 days they will need to submit additional bids every 7 days.
When a staked SPS holder fills a bid, the specified amount of SPS will automatically be delegated to the player who submitted the bid, but it will not be automatically undelegated after the 7 day rental expires. It will be up to the SPS owner to undelegate their SPS after the rental ends.
We hope that various third-party marketplaces and tools will take the opportunity to provide SPS rental automation services which will automatically manage resubmitting bids for renters and undelegating and filling bids for SPS owners. SPS rentals will be able to use the same rental authority that already exists for card rentals which should allow these third-party tools and services to manage SPS rentals for players without the need to share logins or keys.
The technical details of the new SPS delegation rental market can be found here: https://hackmd.io/@antiosh/BkOo_6gFh
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